Gangchester

Closing down clubs, however, does not solve the problem. In September 1989 the police closed the infamous soul club, The Gallery. It was, at the time, a favourite haunt for Cheetham Hill, who were engaged in an all-out war with Moss Side's Doddinton. The following weekend the main players from the 'Hill' arrived at The Hacienda, flashed their guns at the doormen and walked in without paying. In the last eight years the trouble has continued to spread throughout the city. It has even overwhelmed the Gay Village and, most recently, the large mainstream discotheques - the free entry requirement at one has been known to be a menacing announcement of your Salford postcode. When they turn up at your venue you're left to face them down alone, complains Andy Spiro, director of Sankey's Soap, home to both Golden and Bugged Out. He resents what he perceives as a lack of support from the police. "If there was trouble with villains wrecking havoc or dealing drugs at the Arndale shopping centre," Spiro says, "the police wouldn't leave them to it, they'd be right in there dealing with it." Spiro wants GMP to actively police his club. He says he would welcome regular uniformed visits and high-profile policing around his door. "The real problem," he says, "are the little kids running round desperately trying to make a name for themselves. The doormen are terrified of them. "Forget all the various gang affiliations door teams have, or have had, they now want the police to get off their arses and clean up the streets," he adds. "The police know who these kids are, we know who they are, even your average punter could point them out, but the police aren't picking them up off the streets and shaking them down. They should keep harassing them until they stay out of town." However, in a faxed statement Chief Constable David Wilmot's office comments: "GMP will not and cannot provide a security service at licensed premises. Apart from being inappropriate due to a conflict of interest, it would also be logistically impossible - in the city centre alone there are over 150 licensed premises with club type late hours." (See insert p 76) Sankey's is not the first club to ask the police for help. In 1989 The Hacienda warned there was a gun problem brewing. They approached senior GMP officers with a plan to pay for police to stand on the door and control their crowd, as at local football matches and at clubs in America. They were unequivocally told that that was not and never would be policy. In 1991, after months of ferocious gang violence and intimidation, which culminated in the stabbing of six doormen, the club voluntarily closed to protect their staff. Unbeknown to management, the closure pre-empted a move by the police to oppose their licence on grounds of blatant drug use and dealing on the premises. The club reopened months later without police on the door. It also began to fight a rearguard action in the courts and the media. In July 1997 events finally caught up with them - as directors were declaring bankruptcy, senior police officers were moving to revoke their licence. This scuppered a planned management buyout and scared off at least one potential buyer. The local press reported that senior officers were concerned that the club would be sold to a new company acting as a front for city crime bosses.

warrington
club's solution
Although the letter of the law does not allow policemen to work as bouncers, Manchester's gang problems have been largely solved elsewhere. On December 5th 1995, a large contingent of the city's more notorious gangsters descended on the Mr Smith's nightclub in Warrington. They were armed and weren't in the mood to take no for an answer. Cheshire police decided to meet the problem head on. They made it known that there would never be a repeat performance and at the next event clubbers were met by a formidable police presence. There was an armed response unit parked in the first car park, another on the corner of the club, a third in the second car park and three riot vans up the street. Inside the foyer were four uniformed officers, arms crossed, surveying the crowd. The event passed off without incident. Over the following months the police presence was scaled down. Today there is rarely trouble, despite the fact that many of Manchester's gangsters still go there for a night out. Meanwhile, back in Manchester, licensees complain that trouble-makers are devastating the club scene. Club promoter Gary Martin actually believes "decent people" are staying out of the city centre because it's too intimidating. "In other cities you don't see 20 or 30 hooligans going out and enjoying themselves at the expense of other people," he says. "It's not allowed to happen because it's not right."

double murder
Minds were rudely focused on the issue when, in the early hours of October 4th 1997, there was a horrific double murder. At 3.20am 27-year-old Simon Speakman was kicked to death outside a take-away. Twenty minutes later, 22-year-old Steven Hughes was stabbed to death less than 400 yards away. They were not the sort of gang related tit-for-tat killings Manchester had learnt to live with. Rather it appeared both men had been murdered for coming to the aid of women. The local paper called the deaths 'The Good Samaritan Murders'. The city council was quick to react, calling for a minute's silence in clubs the following weekend - a move that enraged many licensees who feared they would simply become a scapegoat and suffer a police crackdown. Against all the odds, licensees argued, Manchester's clubs were safer than many provincial discotheques, where lager-fuelled violence is often random and indiscriminate. Perversely, given the extreme level of the violence on some doors, they had a point. No one dares hit anyone else in a drunken fury on a Manchester dancefloor in case they hit the wrong person - in case they're 'connected'. And in many ways, it is the very lawless nature of Manchester's club scene that's made it so exciting. From the Moss Side blues parties of the 80s to illegal acid house clubs like The Kitchen - based in a two-flat squat in Hulme until 1990 - to road block jungle dances, aggressive street culture has driven the party. But such aggression has now got out of hand. At Phenomenon One in 1995, the crowd were fired up by lads in the middle of the Hacienda dancefloor igniting butane gas canisters to produce huge four feet bursts of flame. The craze caught on. Staying one step ahead, lads at dances at the Lighthouse in Hulme started letting off their guns into the ceiling in appreciation of new dubplates. It became a habit and the promoters had to put money behind the bar at the start of the evening to cover damage. When one lad decided to discharge a pump action shotgun right in the middle of the club, the police decided they had to pay a visit to the venue. Extreme levels of violence are killing Manchester's clubs. Since the city officially went 24 hours over four years ago, very few have dared to regularly stay open all night. To do so attracts gangsters, they say. Spiro admits there's nothing he would like better than to open Sankey's until dawn every weekend. "But sadly," he opines, "it's not safe for us to do so because the police can't or won't protect us."

police response
To the police it seems they just can't win. When a door war over control of the club Home culminated in a terrifying show of force from over 40 balaclava-clad Salford hooligans, the police went in hard and fast. Running fights inside the venue ended in five arrests but afterwards no moves were made to revoke the club's licence. Even so, public confidence was shattered and Home finally closed. Since then Greater Manchester Police have adopted a more pro-active stance and in September of this year did something they had previously said they would not do: for two Saturdays in a row two police officers sat in a van outside Sankey's. Local club owners hope it marks a shift in police attitude. Yet, even though the limited police cover was welcomed by Sankeys' management, they also warned that more consistent and high profile policing right across the city was necessary if the problem was truly to be solved in the long run. City councillors meanwhile maintain that the only way to overcome Manchester's unique problems is for owners and police to have "very honest and confidential dialogue". However, despite brokering high level meetings between the two sides, leading city councillor Pat Karney admits that a trusting relationship is a very long way off. One promoter, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of "police attention", said that although the official attitude seems to be improving, under the surface little has changed. "Get on the wrong side of them, for whatever reason, and they'll take you down," he warns. "Once they target your club they're like a dog with a bone. They don't want to deal with the problem head on together with promoters, they just want arrests and no more clubs." Anthony Stevens, a promoter of some ten years standing, may have been less wary about going on the record, but he was no less outspoken. "I've heard it all before," he says. "In fact this is the third time in the last six years the police have made these kind of noises. It's just to lull everyone into a false sense of security while they hope things die down."

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